Some call it your sixth sense. You refer to it when you have a “gut feeling.” With a vast fiber network running throughout your body, the vagus nerve knows about and helps regulate every critical function in it, from heart rate to digestion to your immune system. Now bioelectric medicine is tapping into that bodily omniscience by using tiny electrical pulses on the vagus nerve to help treat diseases as diverse as epilepsy, diabetes, stroke, Parkinson’s, and even depression. In the coming months, the FDA is set to make a decision about a vagus nerve stimulation device, which, if approved, could provide first-of-its-kind treatment for an autoimmune disease that affects millions of Americans. We consider the groundbreaking potential of vagus nerve stimulation and ask whether electricity could one day replace medications.

Guest:

Kevin Tracey – Neurosurgeon, president of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research at Northwell Health, and author of “The Great Nerve: The New Science of the Vagus Nerve and How to Harness Its Healing Reflexes” 

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

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The White House has proposed unprecedented cuts to NASA’s budget - the largest in the agency’s history. If approved, this withdrawal of funding would force the cancellation of many major programs, including the long anticipated Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope as well as others involved in the search for life in the universe. It would also impact the agency’s ability to do fundamental research. We look at what the loss of NASA programs could mean for the future of space science and exploration. Plus, an intriguing discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope underscores the progress we’ve made - and could lose - when it comes to searching for potential biosignatures in the universe.

Guests:

Leonard David – Space journalist and author

Nadia Drake – Freelance science journalist

Carl Zimmer – New York Times science columnist

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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By one estimate the average American home has 300,000 objects. Yet our ancient ancestors had no more than what they could carry with them. How did we go from being self-sufficient primates to nonstop shoppers? We examine the evolutionary history of stuff through the lens of archeology beginning with he ancestor who first picked up a palm-sized rock and made it into a tool. 

Guest:

Chip Colwell -

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired February 5, 2024

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Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast

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With planets and moons, it’s what’s inside that counts. If we want to understand surface features, like volcanoes, or their history, such as how the planet formed or whether it’s suitable for life, we study their interiors. Astronomer Sabine Stanley takes us on a journey to the centers of Venus, Saturn’s large moon Titan, Jupiter’s moon Io, and of course Earth, to help us understand how they, and the solar system, came to be.

Guest:

Sabine Stanley - Planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of What’s Hidden Inside Planets.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired January 22, 2024

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Worried that AI will replace you? It may not seem like the Hollywood writers’ strike has anything in common with the Luddite rebellion in England in 1811, but they are surprisingly similar. Today we use the term “Luddite” dismissively to describe a technophobe, but the original Luddites – cloth workers – organized and fought Industrial Revolution automation and the factory bosses who were replacing humans with cotton spinning machines and steam powered looms. Find out what our age of AI can learn from textile workers of 200 years ago about keeping humans

in the loop.

Guest:

Brian Merchant - Los Angeles Times tech columnist and author of “Blood in the Machine: The

Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech”  

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired January 14, 2024

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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Bigfoot could get official status if proposed legislation passes making it the state cryptid of California. If nothing else, the effort shows that fascination with cryptids has an outsized footprint on our culture. We look at why mythical creatures continue to capture imaginations - as well as passions - of die-hard believers, despite no evidence for their existence. An author uncovers the origin of a beloved hoax in the American West and its unexpected ties to a real animal and historical medical breakthrough. But are we looking for creature delights in all the wrong places? A tally of Earth’s species reveals that far more remain unidentified than are currently known. Newly discovered critters such as the Yeti crab and an organism dubbed the

Flying Spaghetti Monster are so strange, it challenges us to separate fauna fact from folktale.

Guests:

Chris Rogers – Assemblymember, California’s 2nd Assembly District

Benjamin Radford – Deputy Editor of Skeptical Inquirer Science Magazine, author, and co-host

of Squaring the Strange podcast

Michael Branch – Writer, humorist, and author of On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer

Boris Worm – Marine ecologist, Professor of Biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Self-driving cars, once a thing of science fiction, have become a reality in a handful of cities across the country. As our vehicles gain autonomy, they may provoke a profound shift not unlike the introduction of the first car in the late1800s and raise the question of whether the human driver will soon be obsolete. For a glimpse into the future of self-driving cars, we take a spin through the history of the automobile, from the Model T to the driverless taxi-cab. Along the way, we explore the rise of American manufacturing and the unmistakable but unexpected way in which we have bonded to our four-wheeled companions.

Guests

:

Witold Rybczynski – Professor emeritus of architecture and design at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the book, The Driving Machine: A Design History of the Car

Timothy B Lee – Technology journalist and writer of the newsletter, Understanding AI

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Asteroids are rich in precious metals and other valuable resources. But mining them presents considerable challenges. We discuss these, and consider how these spinning, rocky resources might be the key to a space-faring future. But an economist points out the consequences of bringing material back to Earth, and a scientist raises an ethical question; do we have an obligation to keep the asteroids intact for science?

Guests:

Jim Bell - Planetary scientist in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

Martin Elvis - Astronomer and author of “Asteroids: How Love, Fear, and Greed Will Determine Our Future in Space.”

Ian Lange - Economist and associate professor at the Colorado School of Mines and author of a paper on the feasibility of asteroid mining.

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Originally aired March 18, 2024

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks

for your support!

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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Firing federal workers and freezing grants has upended research institutions, prompting uncertainty about their futures. We look at the real-world impacts these policy changes may have for our mechanisms for collecting and sharing important data. An NIH grant recipient considers the future of her lab’s ability to do basic research, including studying complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s and heart disease. An interruption in reliable access to CDC data comes as highly contagious avian influenza continues to evolve and spread in the U.S. And what does the gutting of NOAA imply for collecting essential weather data, including those used to forecast hurricanes?

Guests:

Kimberly Cooper – Developmental biologist at the University of California, San Diego

Amy Maxmen – Public health reporter at KFF Health News

Alan Sealls – Retired broadcast meteorologist, adjust professor at the University of South Alabama and president-elect of the American Meteorological Society

Bernadette Woods Placky – Chief meteorologist and Climate Matters director at the nonprofit organization, Climate Central Featuring

music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

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What’s it like to live on a block of ice, especially when it thaws? An environment writer shares his forty-year experience in the Arctic, including the time a paddling polar bear tracked him on a river. He describes the stunning beauty of America’s last truly wild place and the dramatic changes to the landscape he recently witnessed. Recent research has backed up his eyewitness accounts, as an arctic scientist presents the latest data collected from a part of world warming four times faster than the rest of the planet.

Guests:

Jon Waterman – Author of Into the Thaw: Witnessing Wonder Amid the Arctic Climate Crisis

Twila Moon – Deputy Lead Scientist and Science Communication Liaison at the National Snow and Ice Data Center

Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake

Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science.

You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support!

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